KCChronicle.com/preps Athlete of the Week: Geneva football junior Pace Temple

Published: Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2013 5:30 a.m. CDT

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Geneva football junior Pace Temple started the season with a memorable performance Saturday in Oswego, making seven catches for 168 yards with two touchdowns while also intercepting a pair of passes in the Vikings’ 29-27 win. Temple, the first St. Charles Bank & Trust-Kane County Chronicle Athlete of the Week in the new school year, recently reflected on Week 1 and looked ahead to the rest of the season with Chronicle sports editor Jay Schwab. The following is an edited transcript:

Tell me about the chemistry you have with [Geneva QB Daniel Santacaterina].

Yeah, me and Daniel have been friends since fifth grade when we started playing travel basketball together. I didn’t play football at that time but he and his family really encouraged me to play football and I did, and ever since we’ve been playing together. … Me and him were throwing just about every day [after Santacaterina recovered from his broken clavicle]. We really started to click and get our timing down, and we really got after it.

It looks like you’ll be playing a lot of offense and defense. What kind of conditioning challenge is that for you?

It’s a lot. I had to do that my freshman year and now. You just kind of push through. A lot of times mentally you think ‘I can’t do this’ but you just have to keep going and have faith in your training over the summer and offseason that you can do it, and you’ve got to do it for your team. I did all the [conditioning] stuff with the team I have to do and a lot of us went to ProForce and did a lot of stuff there, and that got me in really good shape.

You guys just beat one really good team, but it only keep getting tougher coming up, right?

Of course I don’t know what everyone else has but I think we have one of the hardest first three games in the state with Oswego, Wheaton North and Batavia, but you can’t think of that and being unlucky and anything like. You just have to take it on with confidence and hopefully [we get a win Friday], and if not, you just look at it and try to build on it and keep moving on to the next one.

If you had to have one teammate help you with some tough homework, who would it be, and why?

Man, that’s tough. I’d probably go with Quinn Einck. He’s a senior starter on our line and he’s a renaissance man as our coach calls him. He’s a musician, he’s a smart kid. I have complete faith in him that no matter what obstacle I was in, he could help me get out of it.